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wombat_sochoOne of the things that puzzles me about Corporate America is how little attention is paid to collecting intelligence on what the competition is up to. Oh, sure, just about every senior manager worth the price of their Mens' Wearhouse suit has a subscription to the Wall Street Journal, and in Fortune 500 companies like the Evil Banking Neighbor there's a handful of corporate librarians scouring the trade publications, but is there any real effort to collect and analyze information on the competition and the market?
To a certain extent, some of this is done by independent contractors. There's no shortage of market research firms out there scouting the terrain like a herd of combat engineers to figure out what the go/no-go lay of the land is. I find it hard to believe, though, that the business world, which socially speaking has shaped and been shaped by the military since the early 20th century, would not have adopted some of the collection and analysis tools that the Pentagon first developed in the 1940s. It's not even that complicated.
I'm obviously too old to get into that line of work, but I do wonder why it's not more visible.
To a certain extent, some of this is done by independent contractors. There's no shortage of market research firms out there scouting the terrain like a herd of combat engineers to figure out what the go/no-go lay of the land is. I find it hard to believe, though, that the business world, which socially speaking has shaped and been shaped by the military since the early 20th century, would not have adopted some of the collection and analysis tools that the Pentagon first developed in the 1940s. It's not even that complicated.
I'm obviously too old to get into that line of work, but I do wonder why it's not more visible.
